Time Warp-Revised
by Scarlet Lion
Summary: Something changes Scully's mind about joining the FBI


Time Warp

Time Warp

Part One: December 24, 2000, A street in Phoenix, Arizona, 2:35 pm

Lawrence Anderson was upset. Mind you, he had a reason to be. Just days earlier, his ten-year-old son was killed when a bomb leveled the courthouse in Phoenix where the fifth grade class was having a field trip. Lawrence had taken a young clerk hostage in a convenience store. "Let the girl go, and we'll talk," said Agent Scully, who just happened to be there investigating some tales of a monster that was said to steal the souls of local high school students. "We won't negotiate until we have her."

"Come on, Mr. Anderson. We'll give you anything you want. Just let her go," said Agent Mulder fervently.

"Anything?" asked Anderson.

"Anything."

"I want my son back, you bastards!" Anderson sprayed the crowd with bullets, two hitting Scully in the chest. The force knocked her to the pavement.

"Hang on, Scully. You can do it!" pleaded Mulder, his hazel eyes filling with tears. "You can do it!"

"If this is dying," thought Scully, "this isn't bad." She began to lose consciousness and spin faster and faster until…

Part Two: December 24, 1993, Scully residence, 11:15 am

Melissa and Dana Scully were sitting by the Christmas tree, wrapping last minute gifts. Dana looked into Melissa's eyes and continued the conversation, "Missy, I just don't know. Some people are telling me to join. They say it's the greatest honor to be recruited. I'd be part of the nations best, and other people are telling me to stay in medicine. It was what I was born for. Don't waste all that training and skill."

"Dana, you can't know exactly what to do all of the time," Melissa gently chided. "Let's go watch the kids sledding in the park. It will make you feel better." Dana agreed and the two sisters bundled up and headed for the neighborhood park. She and her sister watched the adorable little children fly down the steep slope as they reminisced about their younger days. Suddenly, a child, no older than six, slid into the road in the path of a moving car. Dana watched in horror as the car collided with the tiny child. Dana ran to the boy yelling, "Move back, I'm a doctor!" The crowds parted for her and she yelled for someone to call an ambulance. Dana bent down and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but there. She kept him warm and conscious until the ambulance arrived. When Dana got back home, she went straight up to her room and tore up her application to the FBI.

Part Three: December 24, 1994, FBI basement office, 11:21 pm 

Someone is typing on a computer. There is a knock on the door. "Mr. Mulder, it's Christmas Eve. Aren't you going home?" shouted a janitor through the door.

"Pretty soon, Bernie, pretty soon," replied Mulder. Bernie wandered away mumbling. On the computer screen there is a picture and FBI agent profile of a beautiful brunette. Name: Alexis Phoenix Martin, Sex: Female, Height: 5'8'', Weight: 150, Hair color Brown, Eye color Blue, Profile: Graduated from University of Washington with a double major in criminal justice and anthropology with a minor in biology.Has a Masters degree from George Washington University in forensics with a focus in anthropology. Recruited into the FBI. Spent two years teaching at Quantico. Now working on the X-Files. Mulder sighed, yawned, and put on his coat.

Part Four: December 24, 1995, Sifton residence, 6:20 pm

"Honey, I'm home," Dana said as she walked in the door. Her arms were laden down with boxes, and she was very pregnant. There's no answer. She sighed as she thought about her life. She feels as if she's missing something. It's not work. After years of struggle, she's the head of the pediatric ER. She loves the challenge and joys that come with saving young lives. It's not religion. It's not her marriage. She fell in love with Barry Sifton the day she saw him. Her family was wonderful. She had twin boys, Matthew and Keegan, and another baby on the way. She couldn't put a finger on it, but she knew something wasn't there. She walked downstairs and saw Barry wrestling with the three-year-old boys. She smiled to herself. Barry sold real estate and was home more often than she, so he was often the primary care giver. He was never too tired to wrestle with the boys or play horsey. 

"What took you so long? I thought Nathaniel James had decided to come two weeks early, and you forgot to tell me," Barry said as Keegan jumped on his back.

"You mean Melissa Kathryn. The nurses gave me a 'surprise' shower." Dana crawled onto the Barca lounger and fell asleep. She awoke a few hours later to see Barry watching her sleep. She had a look of urgency on her face. "Barry, it's time." Barry and Dana got Keegan and Matthew into the minivan and dropped them off and Grandma Margaret's. Barry continued the drive to the hospital.

Hours later, at 11:59 pm, a beautiful baby girl was born. Because of her nearly Christmas birth, she was named Noelle Christine. She weighed in at eight pounds, four ounces and measured twenty-three inches. She had red hair and blue eyes like her mother, but was tall with curly hair like her father. As Dana and Barry looked at their new baby, they decided that she was the most beautiful thing imaginable.

Part Five: December 24, 1996, A DC hospital, 9:05 pm

Mulder sat in the plastic hospital chair numb to the world. People kept coming up and wishing him sympathy. He recognized a few faces here and there. His boss, Skinner and Alexis's parents, but mostly it was just a blur of words and faces. "Tragic thing." "So sorry." "What a shame, beautiful girl like that."

Finally, Mulder just couldn't take it anymore and he left. He walked all night, the night after she died. He walked onto the street and hailed a cab. The cab took him to the FBI where he walked to the basement. It was where he first met her. She commanded attention wherever she walked. The first time Mulder laid eyes on her, he sneered; she looked more Hollywood than FBI. She was supposed to keep him in line. With fondness, Mulder remembered their first year. Usually, the first year is the time for partners to build trust. With her, it was Alex being Alex, and Mulder realizing that she was the most perfect person in the whole world. He then walked to her apartment's parking lot. It was there that he had realized he loved her. They were in his car in her parking lot when it had begun to rain. He jumped out in the rain and tore off his coat. Alexis yelled at him, "Come back in here. You'll catch your death."

He began to laugh like a maniac, "I love you!" he had shouted with passion, "I love everything about you. I love how your nose freckles if you've been in the sun too long and the fact that you kick my ass in horse every time we play. I love the fact that you throw my porn away every time you come over and the fact that you always have sunflower seeds in your car, just in case. I love the fact that your favorite book is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I love how great you are with kids. I love the fact that I'm out in the rain shouting out my love for you. I love you, Alexis Phoenix, will you marry me?" She had laughed and said yes, but that was four months ago.

Mulder then walked another block to a 7-11 that was still draped with crime scene tape. It was here that a person, for less than seventy dollars and a pack of Morleys, had robbed him of everything of value in his life. It was there on that sidewalk where Mulder finally let his tears loose.

Part Six: December 24, 1997, Dana's bedroom 1:05 am

Dana awoke with a start. She had had that dream again. She had been having it twice a week since Barry died. It began with her walking quickly down an unfamiliar street. She was chasing something just out of her reach. Tonight, she had almost caught it when a thick fog shrouded the street. As soon as the fog was breathed into her lungs, she had begun to asphyxiate, and she had fallen to the sidewalk amid the crowd of rushing people. That was when she woke up. Dana couldn't go back to sleep so she lay in bed thinking. She had been feeling so empty lately. She knew some of it was from Barry's unexpected death, but she couldn't shake the feeling she was in the wrong place. She as long as she could remember she had felt this way, but Barry and the kids distracted her. Now that Barry was gone and Matthew, Keegan, and Noelle were at their grandmothers she felt her misplacement completely. And also, that feeling that a part of her was missing was growing bigger and bigger. Dana fell to her knees and prayed, "Please God, tell me what's wrong!"

Part Seven: December 24, 1998, Mulder's bedroom, 3:04 am

Mulder awoke with a gasp. He had had that dream again. He was walking down an unfamiliar street when a thick fog poured down and he was unable to breathe. Mulder rolled out of bed leaving the leggy blond beside him, asleep. Since Alex had died, Mulder felt that a part of him was missing. No, he couldn't lie, even to himself. A piece of him was missing even before she had died. That empty piece gnawed at the rest of him, making the whole bigger and bigger. First, he had tried filling the whole with work he supposed he still did that, working past the point of exhaustion. Then it had been booze. Mulder laughed ironically as he remembered that time. He guessed he just wasn't cut out to be an alcoholic. The feeling of being in the wrong place stayed with him until he passed out. All he got from alcohol was a killer hangover that wreaked havoc on his basketball game. Now it was women, a new one, almost half his age, every month. Sara, Makayla, Marie, Katie, Shawna, and now Fawn. They made him feel better for about a week and a half, and then he began feeling worse and worse, so he broke it off, and the cycle would start all over again. Mulder walked to the window and contemplated jumping out. Then he thought of his funeral. Yes, some people would come, and maybe even cry. Surely his latest women and his acquaintances at the bureau would come, but no one would truly miss him. His father had been dead for almost six years and his mother died of cancer in September. Mulder decided it was more painful to die with no one caring than to live. At least while he was alive, there was a possibility of it changing.

Part Eight: December 24, 1999, A hotel in Salt Lake City, UT, 5:05 pm

Dana was sitting on a chair, her eyes red and her cheeks streaked with tears, but she was no longer crying. Dana contemplated how her tears and thought of the last few months. Several months after Barry's death, she knew she had to leave DC. She and the kids flew west. They had ended up in San Jose, California. Dana had gotten a great position in a local hospital, and she was able to afford private school tuition for her sons. It had been in February 1998 when things had started to go bad. Noelle, ever the rambunctious two-year-old, had become lethargic and started to get nosebleeds and huge bruises. As a doctor, Dana knew these could be signs of leukemia. She took Noelle into the hospital's world-renowned pediatric oncologist for tests. The tests confirmed her worst fears. They began treatment immediately. Noelle seemed to be getting better, but they weren't sure. Two weeks before Christmas 1999, Noelle went in for her final battery of tests. Dana didn't know when the test results would be back, but she hoped before Christmas. She had sent Matthew and Keegan to stay with her mother back east while she waited for the results. They were due back late December 23, just in time for Christmas. On that night Dana had gotten the call every mother dreads; her sons' plane had crashed while landing at Salt Lake City's airport, no survivors. Dana spent that Christmas Eve in a dinghy hotel in the worst part of Salt Lake City, holding her daughter and crying. Even though Noelle was too young to understand what was happening, she knew something was wrong and wouldn't stop crying. At about 9:30 that night, Dana had finally gotten Noelle asleep, and she sat, alone in her thoughts. Her cell phone rang, and she knew she needed to answer it. There was something in some dimly lit corner in her mind that told her to pick up her phone. Finally, she gave into the temptation and scratchedly said, "Hello?"

"Dr. Scully, I'm with Halcyon labs, and I hate to bother you this late on Christmas Eve, but we got your daughters test results back, and I figured you'd want to know right away. Noelle is in full remission. You have a very healthy daughter. Merry Christmas, Dr. Scully." For, the first time in what seemed like forever, Dana smiled beneath the tears.

Part Nine: December 24, 2000, A street in Los Angeles, 12:00 pm

A strangely familiar street lies in front of them. They are coming from two different directions, still pinpricks in the distance to each other when the fog rolls in. It's fog like they only have in LA. Thick, blinding, choking; almost malleable in its state. Everyone else on the street stops or slows. They try ineffectively to swipe away the thick fog. Not those two. They just keep moving, faster and faster. Now they are running. They don't know why they're running. To be able to stop running, they would give anything. The fog makes their eyes water and their noses burn, but they still keep running. Through their physical pain, they feel their lives filling up, piece by piece, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. They begin to feel like they belong. Finally, they run into each other. Never have they met, but they embrace like long-lost lovers. As soon as they touch, their world begins to spin, and they are deposited in a strangely familiar place.

Part Ten: December 24, 2000, A street in Phoenix, Arizona, 2:35 pm

Lawrence Anderson was upset. Mind you, he had a reason to be. Just days earlier, his ten-year-old son was killed when a bomb leveled the courthouse in Phoenix where the fifth grade class was having a field trip. Lawrence had taken a young clerk hostage in a convenience store. "Let the girl go, and we'll talk," said Agent Scully, who just happened to be there investigating some tales of a monster that was said to steal the souls of local high school students. "We won't negotiate until we have her."

"Come on, Mr. Anderson. We'll give you anything you want. Just let her go," said Agent Mulder fervently.

"Mulder, let me talk. Mr. Anderson," Scully said, words were pouring out of her mouth from some unknown source, "Mr. Anderson, I know what it's like to lose a child. A child you've held and comforted when they're sick. I know the great joy and pain a child can give you. Joy in life pain in death. Please, Mr. Anderson. Killing is not the answer. You just perpetuate the vicious cycle. Mr. Anderson, put the gun down."

Mulder and Scully see it at the same time. His shoulders slump; his weapon falls to the ground, useless. He begins to weep. "I want my son back." He calmly allows Mulder to put him in handcuffs and lead him to the squad car.

"Scully, that was the most heartfelt thing I've ever heard. It was just beautiful. Was that about Emily?"

"I guess, so. It just felt like something else, some other child. Like some other part of me that I don't even know about was speaking to that man. I just don't know."

Mulder laughed, "Who are you and what have you done with my partner? Is Scully the skeptic saying she had a, gasp, past life?!"

"Shut up, Mulder."

A/N By the way, I originally wrote this before we knew anything about the pregnancy, and all developments between the second half of season 7 and all of season 8. This story is more true to my first draft than the original posted on ffn.net.


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